FOR a rookie cop on the beat amid the wall to wall bustle of uptown Sydney, busy discovering a golden mile of gun and tackle shops, a few steps into an oasis of rods, reels and lures were giant strides of destiny.
Tackle trade man about town on his rounds, John Bethune thought I was there about the parking. Informed to the contrary we hit it off; a few rods poking from a car window when streets were ripped up removing tram lines seemed reason enough for pedestrians to watch their step. Four hours from the clearing beside the Putty Road where the vehicles were left, a green-arsed side down a mossy fire-trail, picking up hitch-hiking leeches as we went, at last lay a gorge section of the Colo.
Fishing with Mr Bass was a gold pass into a network of Bethune, Ron Calcutt, Jack Erskine and Vic McCristal – theirs a unique synergy to change the face of fishing.
Casting from an lightweight inflatable, Bethune and I worked our way along shoreline shrubbery and sandstone ledges. Out to impress Bethune, though still needing to learn my way around a “red warrior” ABU5000, I over-reached. The baitcast reel was the hallmark of a bass fisher, right… and there I was, sharing a boat with the tournament accuracy casting champion of champions. My hands full with a backlash, Mr Bass took his time as we drifted closer to the blackened tip of a protruding branch. His Arbogaster, a bulbous lure that flew like a bullet, plonked down in line with the snag, a metre of so beyond. A couple of cranks and a three-pounder slammed the lure, the only bass for the trip as it turned out.
The climb out, all six hours, removed all doubt of the narcotic influence of bass, albeit reverse cycle at times; the going up isn’t always worth the coming down. Yet for someone needing to get better at casting and catching, the experience was more than a classic introduction to the derring-do romance of wild river bass. A gold pass actually, into a network with the unique synergy to change the face of fishing.
Fishing with Mr Bass was a gold pass into a network of Bethune, Ron Calcutt, Jack Erskine and Vic McCristal – theirs a unique synergy to change the face of fishing. The creative genius of Ron Calcutt attending to design and editorial, John Bethune about the hustings as advertising manager The Australian Angler was born. Printed on art paper, a compendium of tight writing from the best pens and sticks in the land, liberally sprinkled with revealing black and white photography, the bar was raised.
We lost track when Fisho sold to the Yaffa Publication Syndicate. Meantime, John Bethune authored a reminder that he was still the king with an article on spinnerbaits, an Australian first you can be sure. However, the currency of bass fishing had changed, so too the fish. Devalued actually, in the eyes of an old school bassers accustomed to hard yards.
In place of the quiet and stealth of paddle power, pointy nose boats roared across lakes at highway speeds, sonars from which no bass hid do the fish-finding. Worse still, hatchery bred bass imprisoned in lakes became akin to leopards to change spots the way shoreline cover was abandoned for an open water existence.
The incalculable bony bream biomass in Wivenhoe saw the million megalitre pond produce more trophy bass than in all the wild. Sharing my boat on the bass Mecca with Peter Pakula and John Bethune, a slow day unfolded trolling the wide reaches of the main basin with lures going deep enough to get the bends. For John Bethune, it wasn’t bass fishing; going through the motions, his heart was somewhere in a cloistered bass stream, cicada on song, the soft whirr and click of his baitcaster delivering those trademark casts.
